Lenovo agreed on Tuesday to resolve a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission (PDF) for the scandal Superfish, that is to pay 3,5 millions dollars as a fine, and to implement a series of measures that would prevent similar cases in the future.
The manufacturer company allowed a company called Superfish to install VisualDiscovery bloatware on hundreds of thousands of systems built in August 2014. Το λογισμικό επέτρεπε τη συλλογή ευαίσθητων προσωπικών πληροφοριών από τους υπολογιστές πελατών, όπως διαπιστευτήρια connections, social security numbers and many other data.
Lenovo admitted the problem a year later and released a special tool for removing bloatware, describing its collaboration with Superfish as a "significant mistake." Lenovo then promised to keep its systems free of any malware.
That didn't stop the FTC from taking legal action against Lenovo, and as part of the settlement, it specifically prohibited the company from having pre-installed software features that could result in advertisements in browsers. In other words, Lenovo should tell the truth about every special feature of the apps that come pre-installed on the devices it sells.
In addition, all Lenovo models that will be released in the next 20 years should have pre-installed security software that should pass the security scan from a third party. If the product serves ads, it will require consumers to accept whether they want them on their devices.
Hopefully, the FTC will implement more such measures in companies that do not respect the consumer, but their main concern is to earn as much as possible. A good example is Microsoft with the application Get Windows 10 who withdrew (after too many reports).
According to FTC's Terrell McSweeny, the Superfish application was using GW10's practices to mislead Lenovo product users.
